


Five Ways to Go Crazy Without Trying

by bratfarrar



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title isn't joking, folks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Ways to Go Crazy Without Trying

**Author's Note:**

> This one kind of happened while I wasn't looking.

1.

It's just a niggle at the back of John's brain for the first few weeks, but it slowly escalates into the equivalent of mental poison ivy or the bugbite from hell and it _just won't go away_ , not even when he 'accidentally' smashes his (left) hand in one of the too-eager automatic sliding doors, which was admittedly stupid but he's having trouble thinking more than a second and a half into the future because that's how long it takes for him to remember that scratching at the back of his head won't do anything except make his scalp bleed and (ohgod)get it outofhishead _now_ (please god)  
  
It's very quiet in space.  
  
2.

Rationally, Rodney knows that he can't possibly expect to succeed where the Ancients failed: barring some miraculous (and that's what it would have to be) fluke, the Ancients had more manpower, resources, time, and understanding of the intimate details of the universe than he could achieve in several lifetimes. He _knows_ this. He just chooses to ignore it. Both because hey, he might get lucky, and because, well, he's Rodney McKay, and sooner or later he always manages to come up with a solution. (Except for that one time that got him loaned out to the Russians.)  
  
(And this other time, but that won't matter in about 2.85 seconds.)  
  
(boom)  
  
3.

The sky is bluer than Elizabeth remembers it being, but that's probably just because she's looking at it with fresh eyes, new appreciation. Which is probably also why the chocolate pudding doesn't taste quite right--having a hand stuck in your head is bound to mix things up a little afterward.  
  
And people keep asking her how she is because she was _tortured_ ; those sidelong glances are because they're concerned about her. (She tells herself this when they look away again.) They've lost too many people since coming to this place: it's only natural that this latest crisis would make everyone anxious. (Except they don't look anxious, exactly. More--  
  
No. She's not going to let herself think that.)  
  
But her sheets feel wrong and her dreams are bad (trapped--alone--she's not really there) and the sky is still that same impossible blue, and Lorne keeps asking her how she's slept, eyes always unperturbed despite his furrowed brow, and sometimes she sees things at the edges of her line of vision. Or in the mirror, or the shadows at the end of the hall, and when she listens to the silence when she's all alone--  
  
She listens a little too long one morning.  
  
4.

He breaks somewhere in the . . . eighth year? Ninth?  
  
Time doesn't really matter anymore. (Time doesn't really exist anymore: every instant is just an echo of the one before it.)  
  
He'll do anything to stop the endless chase, even if it means becoming like Them. Even if it means _becoming_ Them. Even if it means gutting Them like cattin and eating Their flesh raw, cracking Their bones, clothing himself in Their skins. (His teeth aren't sharp enough, his nails long enough, his rage fierce enough, his howl loud or long enough, but They die anyway.)  
  
They beg for mercy sometimes, but he's forgotten what the word means. (The small ones weep too, sometimes, but they die just as slowly.)  
  
5.

Teyla knows what she does is folly, but she must make the attempt, must try _something_ \--and when she shreds her mind in the attempt to bend the Wraith to her will, there is no one left to care.


End file.
